


Am I Not Your Girl?

by kykythealmostguy



Series: Astonishingly Plotless Xena Dribs and Drabs [4]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kykythealmostguy/pseuds/kykythealmostguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xena's gotten finicky and Gabrielle's been feeling a little insecure since their run-in with Alti in India.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Am I Not Your Girl?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've had this chilling in my Google Drive for several weeks (I forbade myself from working on anything else until I updated Intertwined, and it has been done)... plus, I really didn't want to do my homework today, so the conditions seemed favourable for a new one-shot to go up. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> -Ky
> 
> P.S. Yes, the title is a Sinéad O'Connor album- once again, I'm bad at titling things.

The wind ruffled Gabrielle’s hair and sent a shiver down her spine that roused her from her sleep. Disoriented, she brought a hand to the back of her neck and pawed at the area that her blonde locks used to cover and protect. Discomfort settled in beneath her skin as the chill in the air worked its way from her hairline through her entire body, and she squirmed against Xena on the bedroll, inadvertently bumping her nose into her breastplate and yelping in pain and surprise.

“What?” Xena flinched, instantly reaching for her sword in its place beside her on the ground.

Gabrielle trapped her wrist before she got close enough to grab it. “It’s nothing. Relax. I just hit my head on your stupid breastplate, that’s all.”

The moment the words left her mouth, she winced at her own bitter tone.

Typically, Xena had Gabrielle take off her armour before they went to bed, and Gabrielle secretly harboured an intense love for the habit. There was something she found deeply intimate about the action; for her, it meant the world to be the one who had the privilege of exposing and experiencing Xena’s vulnerability, to lie beside a warrior without her armour.

Not to mention that the practice had its practical uses; it was uncomfortable for Gabrielle to rest her head on bronze, and the stiffness of the material restricted Xena’s movements in her sleep, but those reasons weren’t what resonated with the bard. It was the slow care she took in undressing her warrior that mattered, woven in with the promise that she would protect her defenceless love in the same way Xena did for her during the day.

Recently, however, Xena hadn’t asked for Gabrielle to help her with her breastplate, nor had she taken it off herself. She’d been sleeping in full leathers, her breastplate, gauntlets, boots, and even her chakram- all since Gabrielle had cut her hair.

Xena’s interest in intimacy seemed to have waned since the bard had had her golden hair shorn, and although she was still affectionate, there was a loss of vulnerability, of open tenderness that Gabrielle pined for. They hadn’t made love in days, which was not astronomically unusual, but typically only occurred as a result of Joxer tagging along too closely or a seedy surrounding territory, neither of which had been of any concern for weeks.

_India’s safer, more peaceful than Greece, so the only thing that could have changed for the worse is…_

“Do you want me to take it off?” Xena’s voice cut Gabrielle off from her ruminations.

“What?”

“The breastplate. Would you rather I not wear it?”

The concern in Xena’s voice ran deep, and Gabrielle could visualize exactly how her brow would furrow and those sapphire eyes would glisten… at least the way they would have a week ago.

She opened her eyes to see if her imagination imitated reality, and was admittedly relieved to see that it did. There were the lines that appeared in between Xena’s eyebrows and there was the slight pout on her lips that could make the bard do anything she wanted.

“Kind of,” Gabrielle answered weakly, flushed with embarrassment.

“Kind of,” Xena echoed quietly, as if the words required some level of deep reflection.

Cautiously, she reached down to undo the clasp that held her breastplate to her leathers, then hesitated, the gears in her mind clearly working on overdrive.

Gabrielle could have sworn that her breathing was louder than a charging cavalry in the time between Xena’s hand stopping and the time she hit the nail on the head: “Do _you_ want to take my breastplate off?”

 _Yes!_ Gabrielle wanted to scream, relieved and exasperated all at the same time, but instead she just nodded, and reached out timidly, and with unsteady hands to undo the clasp that Xena’s fingers had vacated moments ago. Before she could stop or second-guess herself, her lips overrode her mind as she blurted out, “Xena, do you like my hair?”

There was silence for a brief moment as Xena flinched, and her eyes widened before she stumbled to answer,“yes,” the surprise in her voice almost making the statement sound like a question itself, “why do you ask?”

Gabrielle sighed, blinking slowly to gather her thoughts before responding. “Because… since I had it cut, you’ve just seemed… distant. We haven’t made love in a week for no good reason and you sleep with your armour on again and I feel like maybe you don’t think I’m beautiful anymore… like maybe you don’t… _love me._ ”

Hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop her voice from breaking halfway through her explanation, and a single disobedient tear rolled down her cheek and onto the bedroll.

“Oh, _Gabrielle,_ ” Xena breathed with equal parts sorrow and adoration, “I didn’t realise… I didn’t know…”

She cupped the bard’s cheek with her hand, using her thumb to wipe away a second tear that sped down the same path as the first, then tilted her chin up gently with her index finger so that their eyes met. “That’s not it at _all._ ”

Gabrielle raised her eyebrows in questioning, hoping that their perceived difficulties had been nothing more than a simple misunderstanding.

Xena’s voice remained at a whisper as she spoke, “it’s just that, in that vision, I was unarmed. And unprotected. And so were you. I- I’m afraid that if I let my guard down, I’ll be putting us in danger. And I thought that if there were some distance between us, you might not want to stay… it’s difficult, knowing that you being with me does nothing but put you in danger, especially when it’s my responsibility to protect you-”

The warrior’s words were halted by a kiss, as Gabrielle pressed their lips gently together for an instant before pulling away.

“Whatever is going to happen will happen, Xena. And whether it happens or not, I don’t want it to get in our way. Don’t let it stop you from loving me, because it’s not stopping me from loving you. I’m not going _anywhere_. So don’t shut me out like this again. Let me in.”

In lieu of murmuring some kind of agreement, or even nodding, Xena answered by crashing their lips together more violently than the bard was accustomed to, and buried her fingers in the back of her hair, finding the short, choppy locks more difficult to grip, but equally as satisfying in a unique way.

A moan escaped Gabrielle’s lips, partially from the intensity of Xena’s passion, and partially from the jolt of her body being knocked against Xena’s breastplate, which she hastily unclasped and cast aside before it could cause any further damage.

A smile danced its way across Xena’s mouth and she started to prop herself up on one elbow before Gabrielle pushed her back down. There was no way she was going to let Xena get away with starting on top tonight after how closed-off she’d been.

“No,” the blonde said, her voice turning from light to dark in an instant, “let me love you.”

Exhaling sharply, Xena nodded, then lay back, allowing herself to be powerless for a time.

Taking her sweet time, Gabrielle straddled the warrior’s stomach, arched her back, and kissed her again, thanking her for her compliance; then she moved down immediately, untying the laces of Xena’s boots with expert speed before removing them and tossing them onto the pile of clothing that was accumulating slowly off to the side.

Xena’s breathing hitched as Gabrielle reached under her leathers to pull off her undergarments, not stopping to tease or build suspense. The bard took note of the reaction she received and smirked inadvertently, watching the warrior close her eyes to prepare for her fingers or her tongue inside her. _Not so fast, my love._

Rather than give her lover what she expected, Gabrielle moved back up her body and kissed her once more, slowly hooking her fingers beneath the straps of her leathers and sliding them off her shoulders.

Sighing, Xena arched her back in response, and Gabrielle took the opportunity to reach around her to loosen her corset, making the purposely-drawn-out removal of her leathers smooth and simple. The brown garment added to the pile, Xena was left in only her gauntlets and a tan shift, the latter of which Gabrielle pulled over her head with ease, exposing her gorgeous, bronzed figure.

The bard licked her lips instinctively, then looked up to see Xena’s eyelids heavy with lust before descending upon her body, leaving a trail of kisses from her navel up to her right breast.

She brushed her nose across Xena’s nipple and felt it harden immediately beneath her touch, taking a moment to relish in Xena’s quiet gasps before taking it into her mouth and rolling her tongue over it a few times. Xena’s breathing beneath her became heavier and more uneven as she gave the same treatment to her left breast, then became less perceptible as she slid down to settle between Xena’s thighs.

Coaxing the warrior’s legs apart with her hands, she placed Xena’s calves on her shoulders and turned her head to kiss and suck the sensitive area at the back of her knee, the resulting groans of pleasure from her lover stoking the growing fire between her legs.

She could feel the heat radiating from Xena’s skin that only grew warmer the closer she slid her tongue up her thigh to her sex, but before she could reach the place her lover needed her most, she drew back and sat up on her knees. Xena’s eyes were still closed in anticipation, and Gabrielle grinned wickedly before leaning forward, planting a kiss on her warrior’s stomach and reaching up to slide the gauntlet off her right wrist.

“Oh, _come on,_ ” Xena sighed desperately, unlatching her fingers from where they clutched at the bedroll to try to swat Gabrielle’s hands away and redirect them back towards her centre, but the bard outmaneuvered her and pinned her hands back by her sides. She wasn’t quite finished inflicting her revenge on the raven-haired woman, and after the week she’d put her through, she was going to take all the time she wanted.

Xena’s eyes opened as she gazed into Gabrielle’s, challenging her to deny her what she desired. Gabrielle stared back at her defiantly, ghosting her fingers up the warrior’s bicep before slowly guiding the second gauntlet down her arm and over her hand. Seeing that she’d lost the battle, Xena closed her eyes once more and waited as Gabrielle did the same thing to the pair of gauntlets on her other arm, exaggerating her movements as much as she possibly could.

With her lover finally lying completely naked beneath her, she took a moment to admire the beauty of her figure, washing her gaze over every curve, every toned muscle, every scar and scrape and blemish before readjusting her legs over her shoulders and leaning down to hover over her sex.

After inhaling deeply once more, she drew her tongue over Xena’s folds, angling her head so that she could close her lips around her clit when she reached it. As she sucked on Xena’s button, she felt more than heard the deep moan that rumbled in the warrior’s chest and took note of the way the muscles in her legs flexed and pulled her tighter against her.

Gabrielle released Xena for an instant, then returned to give long, leisurely strokes to her sex with her tongue, occasionally flicking in and out of her core. She felt her warrior shudder beneath her, encouraging her to continue, and she resumed sucking on Xena’s clit.

A strangled gasp escaped Xena’s lips, and she gripped the bard’s hair tightly, pushing her in harder as if she were trying to fuse them into one.

“ _Gab-ri-elle,_ ” Xena struggled to speak before crying out, her voice cracked and weak from pleasure.

Gabrielle braced herself against Xena’s grasping fingers and violently tensing muscles as she rode out her climax, only stopping her movements when she felt her warrior grow limp.

With one last, gentle rasp of her tongue over Xena’s folds to soothe the now-burning skin, Gabrielle opened her eyes and crawled up Xena’s body to kiss her once more.

Her eyelids fluttered shut with pleasure as Xena’s fingers drew gentle, wavelike patterns on the crown of her head where her scalp tingled from its recent abuse.

When the feel of Xena’s teeth lingered on her lips, she pulled away, raising a questioning eyebrow at the not-so-subtly beaming warrior.

“What?”

“You know,” Xena answered, her grin turning roguish in an instant as she flexed her fingers, grasping again at the short hairs at the crown of Gabrielle’s head, “I actually find it _very_ sexy.”

Shaking her head and laughing at Xena’s lack of tact, Gabrielle allowed the warrior to reclaim her lips and slowly roll her onto her back.


End file.
